Disney’s A Christmas Carol (2009)

Arguably the most surprising thing about Robert Zemeckis’ A Christmas Carol is not the lavish visual spectacle of the visitations of the Christmas spirits and Scrooge’s visions of the past, presents and future. Nor is it the loopy roller-coaster departures from the text (that’s expected, almost de riguer).

It’s not Jim Carrey’s fine vocal and physical performance as the original Grinch, transferred by the magic of performance capture technology to the impossibly gaunt virtual Ebenezer Scrooge in a computer-generated London. It’s not even the remarkable fidelity to Dickens’ dialogue, ranking among the most faithful big-screen adaptations of the tale — though as surprises go that’s a close second.

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The most surprising thing, arguably, is the soundtrack. Not the official track listing offered by Walt Disney Records: a lineup of themes, composed by Alan Silvestri, inspired by episodes from the story (“Flight to Fezziwigs,” “Who Was That Lying Dead?” etc.). I mean the actual songs sung and played throughout the film. This is a Christmas Carol with actual Christmas carols. “Venite, Adoremus/O Come All Ye Faithful.” “Good Christian Men, Rejoice.” “Joy to the World.”

It’s almost a shock to hear the words “Christ the Savior is born” in a big-budget Hollywood movie today, even a time-honored period piece like A Christmas Carol. Only five years ago, Zemeckis’ own The Polar Express rang with “Silver Bells” and “Deck the Halls,” but not so much as a “rum pa pum pum” from the stable at Bethlehem (not even at Santa’s North Pole home, where everyone celebrates Christmas).

“A Christmas movie too chickenhearted to mention Jesus,” wrote the Boston Globe critic Ty Burr at the time. He was talking about Hollywood’s other 2004 holiday offering, Christmas With the Kranks, but what difference does it make? He could have been talking about practically any recent Hollywood Christmas offering short of The Nativity Story, including Carrey’s own How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

Now Zemeckis and Carrey have given us a Christmas movie that’s actually aware of the reason for the season, that doesn’t reduce street carolers to crooning “O Tannenbaum” and “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” Even in the score, if I remember correctly, are strains of “Good King Wenceslas” and “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” (though at times arranged for action-movie tension). Musically speaking, it might just be the most Christmas-y Christmas Carol yet.

The story, of course, is still Dickens’ secular Christmas fable, the grandfather of all secular Christmas redemption stories, from the sublime (It’s a Wonderful Life) to the sub-par (The Santa Clause). Despite a few nods to the Christian story, Dickens’ story is not a work of Christian imagination. (Nods that make it into the film include Tiny Tim’s Christmas hope of being seen in church as a reminder of the one “who made lame beggars walk and blind men see,” and the Ghost of Christmas Present’s reference to his 1800-plus “brothers,” i.e., Christmases past since the birth of Christ.)

In these days of persistent population fears, when only a few weeks ago an essay in the The Guardian talked about the relative environmental benefit of “culling” Americans vs. Bangladeshis, the inclusion of Scrooge’s acerbic line about “decreasing the surplus population” — a line thrown back in his face later in the story, with a startling Zemeckian twist — is practically a heroic act of cultural resistance.

Which isn’t to say that Zemeckis’ film is always equally heroic, particularly when it comes to the gratuitous action and slapstick set pieces. I don’t object to Mr. Scrooge’s wild ride above London rooftops and over the river and through the woods with the Ghost of Christmas Past — that makes sense in context — but there’s no point to the subsequent rocket shot, in which Scrooge is blasted into the stratosphere and goes sailing past the moon like E.T. and Elliot on their bike.

Nor am I crazy about the Ghost of Christmas Past’s appearance as an animated candle flame (why?) or Carrey’s whispery, brogue-inflected voicing of the character — though in general the casting of Carrey as all three Christmas spirits as well as Scrooge makes artistic sense. I do like Marley’s ghost (Gary Oldman), floating weightless above the floor but held down by chains (you can see them go all the way around right through his body) and heavy blocks — yes, and his alarmingly sagging lower jaw, straight out of Dickens. (The transparency is in Dickens too: Scrooge can see the buttons on the back of Marley’s coat right through his entrails.)

Perhaps the most visually brilliant sequence in the film is the visitation of the Ghost of Christmas Present, in which Scrooge never actually leaves his house but is nevertheless given what the Ghost himself calls a “heavenly” perspective, via what filmmakers call a “God shot” (i.e., from overhead), on the Cratchit household.

The depiction of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is almost restrained in its minimalism — but the third act is marred by the most egregious excursion into irrelevant excitement as Scrooge is reduced to a few inches tall (why? just so Carrey’s voice can be digitally ratcheted up to chipmunk territory?) and chased down dark cobbled alleys and across icy shingles, pursued by a frightening death carriage. (That scene, and the appalling visitation by Jacob Marley, are the two bits most likely to traumatize young viewers.)

The performance capture technique has improved since The Polar Express; Scrooge himself works wonderfully, though some of the other characters still look like animatronic mannequins, and Tiny Tim in particular (voiced for no reason by Oldman) is a mascot rather than a breathing character. Carrey is persuasive as the miserly Scrooge, but doesn’t manage the emotional transformation of the redeemed Scrooge. His virtual Scrooge is clearly haunted by the ghost of Alistair Sim — a sim Sim, as it were — with flashes of Carrey mugging not out of place in the redeemed Scrooge’s giddy merriment. In a star-studded cast, Bob Hoskins as Fezziwig and Colin Firth as Scrooge’s nephew are welcome presences.

If, in the end, this Christmas Carol still feels in a way more like a theme-park ride than an emotionally satisfying drama — sort of like riding “Peter Pan’s Flight” at Disneyworld, as opposed to watching Peter Pan — I’m not sure I really mind. (Actually, Universal’s high-tech “Spider-Man” ride is probably a better point of comparison.) The story is robust enough to survive the theme-park treatment, and for the most part it’s a very good ride, with a welcome note of actual Christmas caroling spirit. Whether Zemeckis’ beloved performance capture can ever move beyond theme park rides remains to be seen.